President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has announced plans by the government to address the legislative and policy loopholes in the country’s justice delivery system.

The decision, according to him, is to strengthen the justice delivery system and uphold the rights of all citizens in the spirit of the constitution.

President Akufo-Addo said this last Friday when he delivered an address at the Justice for All Programme Awards and Dinner Night in Accra.

“If we are to achieve our aim of economic advancement, then we must all have equal access to the institutions of justice and the benefits of speedy, efficient and fair resolution of disputes by judicial processes.

“We cannot be a nation where some are under the shed of freedom and justice while others are rid of its protective shade,” he said and commended the Justice for All Programme which began 10 years ago.

President Akufo-Addo said the programme had ensured a steady reduction of remand population in the prisons from 33 per cent to under 30 per cent.

He commended the Minister of Railway Development, Mr. Joe Gartey, who initiated the programme when he was the Minister of Justice and Attorney General about a decade ago and the former Chief Justice, Georgina Wood, who sustained and institutionalised the programme.

The President also commended the current Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, who had intensified the operations of the programme and guided the introduction of the first draft of the None Custodial Sentencing Bill.

He said through the programme, one Zolo Kuta, after spending 20 years on remand at the Ankaful Prison, Tida Halidu, a mother who gave birth to a baby boy at the Kumasi Prison, and Yaw Nkoom, who spent six months at the Winneba Prison on a charge of threat of death resulting from his failure to pay GH¢1 for akpeteshie, were able to rejoin the society.

“I appeal to the general public to support this programme. Each one of us can be exposed to injustice and we must therefore ensure that none of us is denied speedy access to justice.

“The survival of this programme is not for the benefit of those who are being held in prisons today but for all Ghanaians,” he said, and commended everyone who had helped to make the programme a success.